A Framework for Evidentiary Reasoning in Biology: Insights from Laboratory Courses Focused on Evolutionary Tree-thinking.

Science educators report that students struggle with understanding, using, and evaluating the evidence underpinning scientific knowledge. However, there are not many studies focused on helping instructors address those difficulties. Here, we report on a laboratory instructor's scaffolding of students' evidentiary reasoning with and about evidence for evolutionary trees with guidance from the Conceptual Analysis of Disciplinary Evidence (CADE) framework, which links biological knowledge with epistemic considerations. To consider both domain-general and discipline-specific aspects of evidence, CADE was implemented to inform scaffolds in two ways: (1) generic evidence scaffolds (GES) reminded students of general epistemic considerations; (2) disciplinary evidence scaffolds (DES) explicitly reminded students of the disciplinary knowledge of relevance for considering biological evidence. An instructor's lab discussions were compared before and after they had a workshop with CADE. CADE helped the lab instructor facilitate students' evidentiary reasoning about evolutionary trees. In comparison to baseline, both GES and DES discussions covered more aspects and relationships among types of evidence for evolutionary tree-thinking and the instructor prompted more kinds of general epistemic considerations and biological knowledge. DES discussions emphasized the importance of disciplinary knowledge for research design. The CADE framework guided planning and implementation of intentional scaffolding aimed at guiding evidentiary reasoning. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11191-023-00435-6.

Getting by with a Little Help from Friends: A Qualitative Case Study of Students' Strategies for Coping with Failure in an Undergraduate Biology Laboratory Course.

Recent emphasis on research competencies in undergraduate biology education means that more students are doing course-based research. Professional research scientists learn from failed research, but undergraduate students who encounter failure in their biology lab research may not always respond in ways that advance their learning. There is a need to examine individual students' responses to failed research as they conduct investigations in an undergraduate lab course. Here, we report a qualitative research case study based on data from interviews and course work to examine five undergraduate students' emotional responses, coping strategies, and perceptions of learning as they confronted failure in a semester-long intro lab course investigation. All five students displayed negative emotions when they encountered a research obstacle, but their coping strategies varied. However, by the end of their research process, all had responded with competent actions, relationship actions, and autonomous actions as adaptive coping strategies. Support seeking played a critical role to promote autonomy as a foundation for research self-efficacy. After completing their research, the students reported valuable learning from the experience. Implications for instruction are based on examples of coping strategies for managing negative emotions from failed research.

Using expert data to inform the use of research methods and representations to enhance biochemistry instruction and textbook design.

Biochemistry textbooks often provide a disconnected, highly mathematical, and decontextualized treatment of thermodynamic and kinetic principles, which renders topics like protein folding difficult to teach. This is concerning given that graduates entering careers, like the pharmaceutical industry, must be able to apply such knowledge and related research methods to solve biochemistry research problems. Thus, it is essential that instructors have strategies to incorporate research methods and representations to help students understand the source of such scientific knowledge. Therefore, the goal of our work is to examine expert practice and use the findings to identify instructional strategies to incorporate more cutting-edge research and authentic ways of knowing into science classrooms and textbooks. Toward this goal, we examined how four scientists explain protein folding and dynamics research, focusing on the interaction of spoken language and representations, including gesture. Our analysis indicates that experts employ multiple representations and research methods to communicate how evidence can be used to understand phenomena. In contrast, textbooks explain what is known but seldom use representations to explain how it is known. Based on our findings, we suggest implications for instruction, including the design of textbooks, as well as potential instructional strategies to incorporate discussion of experimental methods and interpretation of representations during classroom activities. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(5):513-531, 2019.

Anticipated learning outcomes for a biochemistry course-based undergraduate research experience aimed at predicting protein function from structure: Implications for assessment design.

Several course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been published in the literature. However, only limited attempts have been made to rigorously identify the discovery-type research abilities that students actually develop during such experiences. Instead, there has been a greater focus on technical or procedural-type knowledge or general CURE skills that are too comprehensive to effectively assess. Before the extent of discovery-type learning outcomes can be established in students (termed verified learning outcomes or VLOs), it is important to rigorously identify the anticipated learning outcomes (ALOs) and to then develop student assessments that target each ALO to reveal the nature of such student learning. In this article we present a matrix of 43 ALOs, or course-based undergraduate research abilities (CURAs), that instructors anticipate students will develop during a recently-developed biochemistry CURE focusing on the prediction of protein function from structure. The CURAs were identified using the process for identifying course-based undergraduate research abilities (PICURA) and classified into seven distinct themes that enabled the characterization of the CURE and a comparison to other published inventories of research competencies and CURE aspects. These themes and the CURE protocols aligning to the CURAs were used to form the ALO matrix that was, in turn, used to inform the design of an assessment that revealed evidence that a student had developed some of the targeted CURAs. Future research will focus on further assessment development that targets other identified CURAs. This approach has potential applications to other CUREs both in biochemistry and other science disciplines. © 2018 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 46(5):478-492, 2018.

A Community-Building Framework for Collaborative Research Coordination across the Education and Biology Research Disciplines.

Since 2009, the U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Biological Sciences has funded Research Coordination Networks (RCN) aimed at collaborative efforts to improve participation, learning, and assessment in undergraduate biology education (UBE). RCN-UBE projects focus on coordination and communication among scientists and educators who are fostering improved and innovative approaches to biology education. When faculty members collaborate with the overarching goal of advancing undergraduate biology education, there is a need to optimize collaboration between participants in order to deeply integrate the knowledge across disciplinary boundaries. In this essay we propose a novel guiding framework for bringing colleagues together to advance knowledge and its integration across disciplines, the "Five 'C's' of Collaboration: Commitment, Collegiality, Communication, Consensus, and Continuity." This guiding framework for professional network practice is informed by both relevant literature and empirical evidence from community-building experience within the RCN-UBE Advancing Competencies in Experimentation-Biology (ACE-Bio) Network. The framework is presented with practical examples to illustrate how it might be used to enhance collaboration between new and existing participants in the ACE-Bio Network as well as within other interdisciplinary networks.

How to Identify the Research Abilities That Instructors Anticipate Students Will Develop in a Biochemistry Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE).

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been described in a range of educational contexts. Although various anticipated learning outcomes (ALOs) have been proposed, processes for identifying them may not be rigorous or well documented, which can lead to inappropriate assessment and speculation about what students actually learn from CUREs. In this essay, we offer a user-friendly and rigorous approach based on evidence and an easy process to identify ALOs, namely, a five-step Process for Identifying Course-Based Undergraduate Research Abilities (PICURA), consisting of a content analysis, an open-ended survey, an interview, an alignment check, and a two-tiered Likert survey. The development of PICURA was guided by four criteria: 1) the process is iterative, 2) the overall process gives more insight than individual data sources, 3) the steps of the process allow for consensus across the data sources, and 4) the process allows for prioritization of the identified abilities. To address these criteria, we collected data from 10 participants in a multi-institutional biochemistry CURE. In this essay, we use two selected research abilities to illustrate how PICURA was used to identify and prioritize such abilities. PICURA could be applied to other CUREs in other contexts.

How Four Scientists Integrate Thermodynamic and Kinetic Theory, Context, Analogies, and Methods in Protein-Folding and Dynamics Research: Implications for Biochemistry Instruction.

To keep biochemistry instruction current and relevant, it is crucial to expose students to cutting-edge scientific research and how experts reason about processes governed by thermodynamics and kinetics such as protein folding and dynamics. This study focuses on how experts explain their research into this topic with the intention of informing instruction. Previous research has modeled how expert biologists incorporate research methods, social or biological context, and analogies when they talk about their research on mechanisms. We used this model as a guiding framework to collect and analyze interview data from four experts. The similarities and differences that emerged from analysis indicate that all experts integrated theoretical knowledge with their research context, methods, and analogies when they explained how phenomena operate, in particular by mapping phenomena to mathematical models; they explored different processes depending on their explanatory aims, but readily transitioned between different perspectives and explanatory models; and they explained thermodynamic and kinetic concepts of relevance to protein folding in different ways that aligned with their particular research methods. We discuss how these findings have important implications for teaching and future educational research.

A cross-cultural comparison of high school students' responses to a science centre show on the physics of sound in South Africa.

We report on the attitudes and ideas developed by students from three distinct school groups to a science show about sound. We addressed two research questions: (1) How do the students compare with respect to their (a) attitudes to the sound show and to science in general and (b) changes in conceptual understanding as a result of the show and (2) what changes could be made to the show, and to science shows in general, that would be sensitive to the cultural and language differences of the groups? These were addressed by multiple-choice, pre- and post-tests comprising both attitudinal and conceptual questions. Our results pointed to a common enjoyment of the show but a different understanding of concepts and consequent learning, which suggest that science shows (and science teaching) need to be adjusted to accommodate different cultural groups for maximum impact.

Exploring the MACH Model's Potential as a Metacognitive Tool to Help Undergraduate Students Monitor Their Explanations of Biological Mechanisms.

When undergraduate biology students learn to explain biological mechanisms, they face many challenges and may overestimate their understanding of living systems. Previously, we developed the MACH model of four components used by expert biologists to explain mechanisms: Methods, Analogies, Context, and How. This study explores the implementation of the model in an undergraduate biology classroom as an educational tool to address some of the known challenges. To find out how well students' written explanations represent components of the MACH model before and after they were taught about it and why students think the MACH model was useful, we conducted an exploratory multiple case study with four interview participants. We characterize how two students explained biological mechanisms before and after a teaching intervention that used the MACH components. Inductive analysis of written explanations and interviews showed that MACH acted as an effective metacognitive tool for all four students by helping them to monitor their understanding, communicate explanations, and identify explanatory gaps. Further research, though, is needed to more fully substantiate the general usefulness of MACH for promoting students' metacognition about their understanding of biological mechanisms.

Development of the Neuron Assessment for Measuring Biology Students' Use of Experimental Design Concepts and Representations.

Researchers, instructors, and funding bodies in biology education are unanimous about the importance of developing students' competence in experimental design. Despite this, only limited measures are available for assessing such competence development, especially in the areas of molecular and cellular biology. Also, existing assessments do not measure how well students use standard symbolism to visualize biological experiments. We propose an assessment-design process that 1) provides background knowledge and questions for developers of new "experimentation assessments," 2) elicits practices of representing experiments with conventional symbol systems, 3) determines how well the assessment reveals expert knowledge, and 4) determines how well the instrument exposes student knowledge and difficulties. To illustrate this process, we developed the Neuron Assessment and coded responses from a scientist and four undergraduate students using the Rubric for Experimental Design and the Concept-Reasoning Mode of representation (CRM) model. Some students demonstrated sound knowledge of concepts and representations. Other students demonstrated difficulty with depicting treatment and control group data or variability in experimental outcomes. Our process, which incorporates an authentic research situation that discriminates levels of visualization and experimentation abilities, shows potential for informing assessment design in other disciplines.

An instructional design process based on expert knowledge for teaching students how mechanisms are explained.

In biology and physiology courses, students face many difficulties when learning to explain mechanisms, a topic that is demanding due to the immense complexity and abstract nature of molecular and cellular mechanisms. To overcome these difficulties, we asked the following question: how does an instructor transform their understanding of biological mechanisms and other difficult-to-learn topics so that students can comprehend them? To address this question, we first reviewed a model of the components used by biologists to explain molecular and cellular mechanisms: the MACH model, with the components of methods (M), analogies (A), context (C), and how (H). Next, instructional materials were developed and the teaching activities were piloted with a physical MACH model. Students who used the MACH model to guide their explanations of mechanisms exhibited both improvements and some new difficulties. Third, a series of design-based research cycles was applied to bring the activities with an improved physical MACH model into biology and biochemistry courses. Finally, a useful rubric was developed to address prevalent student difficulties. Here, we present, for physiology and biology instructors, the knowledge and resources for explaining molecular and cellular mechanisms in undergraduate courses with an instructional design process aimed at realizing pedagogical content knowledge for teaching. Our four-stage process could be adapted to advance instruction with a range of models in the life sciences.

A model of how different biology experts explain molecular and cellular mechanisms.

Constructing explanations is an essential skill for all science learners. The goal of this project was to model the key components of expert explanation of molecular and cellular mechanisms. As such, we asked: What is an appropriate model of the components of explanation used by biology experts to explain molecular and cellular mechanisms? Do explanations made by experts from different biology subdisciplines at a university support the validity of this model? Guided by the modeling framework of R. S. Justi and J. K. Gilbert, the validity of an initial model was tested by asking seven biologists to explain a molecular mechanism of their choice. Data were collected from interviews, artifacts, and drawings, and then subjected to thematic analysis. We found that biologists explained the specific activities and organization of entities of the mechanism. In addition, they contextualized explanations according to their biological and social significance; integrated explanations with methods, instruments, and measurements; and used analogies and narrated stories. The derived methods, analogies, context, and how themes informed the development of our final MACH model of mechanistic explanations. Future research will test the potential of the MACH model as a guiding framework for instruction to enhance the quality of student explanations.

Assessment of course-based undergraduate research experiences: a meeting report.

The Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences Network (CUREnet) was initiated in 2012 with funding from the National Science Foundation program for Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education. CUREnet aims to address topics, problems, and opportunities inherent to integrating research experiences into undergraduate courses. During CUREnet meetings and discussions, it became apparent that there is need for a clear definition of what constitutes a CURE and systematic exploration of what makes CUREs meaningful in terms of student learning. Thus, we assembled a small working group of people with expertise in CURE instruction and assessment to: 1) draft an operational definition of a CURE, with the aim of defining what makes a laboratory course or project a "research experience"; 2) summarize research on CUREs, as well as findings from studies of undergraduate research internships that would be useful for thinking about how students are influenced by participating in CUREs; and 3) identify areas of greatest need with respect to CURE assessment, and directions for future research on and evaluation of CUREs. This report summarizes the outcomes and recommendations of this meeting.

Development and Validation of a Rubric for Diagnosing Students' Experimental Design Knowledge and Difficulties.

It is essential to teach students about experimental design, as this facilitates their deeper understanding of how most biological knowledge was generated and gives them tools to perform their own investigations. Despite the importance of this area, surprisingly little is known about what students actually learn from designing biological experiments. In this paper, we describe a rubric for experimental design (RED) that can be used to measure knowledge of and diagnose difficulties with experimental design. The development and validation of the RED was informed by a literature review and empirical analysis of undergraduate biology students' responses to three published assessments. Five areas of difficulty with experimental design were identified: the variable properties of an experimental subject; the manipulated variables; measurement of outcomes; accounting for variability; and the scope of inference appropriate for experimental findings. Our findings revealed that some difficulties, documented some 50 yr ago, still exist among our undergraduate students, while others remain poorly investigated. The RED shows great promise for diagnosing students' experimental design knowledge in lecture settings, laboratory courses, research internships, and course-based undergraduate research experiences. It also shows potential for guiding the development and selection of assessment and instructional activities that foster experimental design.

Widespread distribution and unexpected variation among science faculty with education specialties (SFES) across the United States.

College and university science departments are increasingly taking an active role in improving science education. Perhaps as a result, a new type of specialized science faculty position within science departments is emerging--referred to here as science faculty with education specialties (SFES)--where individual scientists focus their professional efforts on strengthening undergraduate science education, improving kindergarten-through-12th grade science education, and conducting discipline-based education research. Numerous assertions, assumptions, and questions about SFES exist, yet no national studies have been published. Here, we present findings from a large-scale study of US SFES, who are widespread and increasing in numbers. Contrary to many assumptions, SFES were indeed found across the nation, across science disciplines, and, most notably, across primarily undergraduate, master of science-granting, and PhD-granting institutions. Data also reveal unexpected variations among SFES by institution type. Among respondents, SFES at master of science-granting institutions were almost twice as likely to have formal training in science education compared with other SFES. In addition, SFES at PhD-granting institutions were much more likely to have obtained science education funding. Surprisingly, formal training in science education provided no advantage in obtaining science education funding. Our findings show that the SFES phenomenon is likely more complex and diverse than anticipated, with differences being more evident across institution types than across science disciplines. These findings raise questions about the origins of differences among SFES and are useful to science departments interested in hiring SFES, scientific trainees preparing for SFES careers, and agencies awarding science education funding.

Investigation of science faculty with education specialties within the largest university system in the United States.

Efforts to improve science education include university science departments hiring Science Faculty with Education Specialties (SFES), scientists who take on specialized roles in science education within their discipline. Although these positions have existed for decades and may be growing more common, few reports have investigated the SFES approach to improving science education. We present comprehensive data on the SFES in the California State University (CSU) system, the largest university system in the United States. We found that CSU SFES were engaged in three key arenas including K-12 science education, undergraduate science education, and discipline-based science education research. As such, CSU SFES appeared to be well-positioned to have an impact on science education from within science departments. However, there appeared to be a lack of clarity and agreement about the purpose of these SFES positions. In addition, formal training in science education among CSU SFES was limited. Although over 75% of CSU SFES were fulfilled by their teaching, scholarship, and service, our results revealed that almost 40% of CSU SFES were seriously considering leaving their positions. Our data suggest that science departments would likely benefit from explicit discussions about the role of SFES and strategies for supporting their professional activities.